Shortly after Cameron Smith and Charlotte Peverett tied the knot 10 years ago, Cameron proposed that he take his wife's surname.

While many of marriage's fundamental elements have evolved over the years – the freedom to separate, the legalisation of same-sex marriage in numerous countries and prenuptial agreements –one thing that has been slow to evolve is the changing of surnames in heterosexual unions. But things are beginning to change, with a number of men deciding to take on their wives' surnames in some form.

These days many women keep their own name when they marry, and couples are increasingly opting for a double-barrelled or merged name. But men who take their wife's surname are still quite rare. Kirstie Brewer spoke to three.

A recent study found that people think that women who decide to keep their surname after marriage have more authority over them. This, however, affects how people see the spouse.

A few decades ago, at the time of the marriage, the women almost always took the full name of the husband, with the suffix "va" in Hungary. Wives, however, now have plenty of choices outside of this version. There is a great deal of popularity in getting their parents' surnames or fitting them with their own hyphen in front of their first name.

In Taiwan, many women born in 40 or 50 years after the Republic of China are no longer surnamed. But in the United States, we still see that Hillary is crowned with the husband's name "Clinton", and the first lady Melanie is crowned "Trump." After the American actress Jessica Biel married the singer's husband Justin Timberlake, she became Jessica Timberlake. Why are women in the United Kingdom and the United States still surnamed?

Very often, the husband will be perceived as submissive and weaker in the relationship - psychologists say based on research conducted in the US and Great Britain.

“Our findings indicate that people extrapolate from marital surname choices to make more general inferences about a couple’s gender-typed personality traits,” said Rachael Robnett, an assistant professor of psychology at UNLV, and the study’s co-author.